“Wait, like, right now?” Lexi asked, perplexed. Lea grimaced for a moment before Lexi winced and remembered. “Right now, Alpha?”
“Of course,” Lea replied, relaxing her frown into a smile. “Although you won’t experience your first proper transformation until the next full moon—which is two nights from now, aren’t you so lucky, darling?—we can turn you into a beastess right here, right now.”
She looked at her claws on one paw nonchalantly. Lexi noticed for the first time that she hadn’t completely cleaned his blood off of it from earlier.
Her claws gave off sparks of red magical energy. Some of his blood still clung to the tips of a couple of her claws. And it hadn’t dried—it was as wet as ink.
“That is … if you can survive the influx of wild magic. But I have a good feeling that the Goddess of the Hunt has smiled upon you this evening.”
She turned to the crowd of beastesses.
“Pack-mates! Light your candles!”
“Yes, Alpha,” they replied in unison. From under their cloaks, the beastesses each pulled out a long white candle in a small candle holder to catch the wax. One beastess on the end used a lighter to light her candle, and one by one each of the pack members passed the flame carefully down the line until all of their candles were lit.
As if on cue, Syd pulled out the remote and hit a button on it. All of the neon lights turned off at once, plunging the entire abandoned train station into inky black darkness, save for the dim light of the candles held by the pack of beastesses surrounding Lexi.
Syd stripped off her clothes until, like Lexi, she too was completely naked. Her Amazonian body was so beautiful in the candlelight. Her muscles were even more impressive when shown off completely like this, casting flickering shadows over herself with every twist and flex as her clothes came off.
Some would say she was just a hunk of meat for the eyes, but Lexi knew better. She was no prey, no meat. She was a hunter, and this is what the body of an apex predator looked like. Her hundreds of pounds of tattooed and scarred muscle were on full display for the whole pack to see—and judging by that smirk on her face as she stood fully upright, she adored the attention.
And fuck, was she hot.
Syd’s large breasts were well-supported by the massive pecs behind them. Her broad shoulders and lats were perfectly balanced by the curve of her wide hips and firm ass, with her sturdy abs in-between keeping her entire body in perfect posture and total stability. Her huge legs and gigantic arms only emphasized her strength without looking disproportionate.
And her … cock …
He shouldn’t have been surprised that every part of her was huge. How had she been hiding that? With wild magic?! Lexi had to look away for modesty, and to keep his composure.
She was trans. And apparently so was he.
… Would he look like her one day, after this?
Alpha Lea used her blood-soaked claws like a quill dipped in ink to carefully write upon Syd’s bare skin as they sparked with wild magic. Lexi’s blood settled into magical patterns on the surface of Syd’s body—runes, symbols, sigils, and other designs Lexi couldn’t recognize. Once she had double-checked her work and was completely satisfied, Lea turned to Lexi, placing her paws together and closing her eyes.
The High Beastess began the ritual.
“O Goddess of the Hunt, we bring You an offering. We bring You someone who is weak and afraid, that You might give her Your strength and courage. We bring You prey, that You might transform her into one of the hunters of Your pack. We bring You a chained creature, so that You might unleash her and set her free. With Your permission, we wish to welcome this initiate with open paws and bared fangs. With my Beta as the vessel for Your will, we humbly ask, O Goddess, that You deem this human worthy of Your gifts.”
Alpha Lea tilted her head back and roared.
She opened her amber eyes, shimmering with wild magic, and extended one paw towards Syd, who immediately licked Lexi’s blood off of her alpha’s claws. As soon as she had lapped up the remaining blood, all the other beastesses, including Lea, stepped back to give Syd and Lexi a large amount of space to themselves.
Ah. Fuck.
Syd’s eyes went bloodshot, golden orbs framed in crimson, as the pace of her breathing increased. She stared at Lexi with lust, greed, hunger. A line of drool trickled down from her panting mouth.
Suddenly she hunched over and flexed her muscles, except they didn’t stop flexing. Her physique swelled and expanded, like a bodybuilder’s progress in fast-forward, as a fine layer of gray fur started coating her naked body. Her nails turned into claws sharp as knives. Starting from her neck, her vertebrae popped out of her back one by one, and didn’t stop at the bottom—a long tail erupted from the base of her spine with a grotesque cracking noise, before it too was coated in long thick fur.
Her legs took on a digitigrade shape, her feet stretching so her weight was on the balls of her feet rather than her ankles. Her hands and feet gained thick paw pads as her big toes became dewclaws that moved up on her lengthening feet. Just before her shaggy gray fur covered her groin, he could see her cock gaining a fuzzy sheath around it as well.
Syd moaned deeply as her skull rearranged itself. Her ears became longer and pointed, her purple hair was joined by a thick wolf-like mane, and her nose turned black and split a cleft down the center of her lips. With a series of sickening snaps and pops, a muzzle grew from her face like a sprouting flower of terror, her fanged teeth shifting and lengthening into a distinctly canine dental anatomy.
All in all, it took less than thirty seconds for the beauty to become a beast.
The gigantic ten-foot werewolf woman howled, an ear-piercing howl that redoubled on itself off of the train station’s stone walls.
This was way beyond the first time Lexi saw Syd partially transform in that nightclub office. This was Syd’s true form as a beastess, in all of her terrifying glory, towering right in front of him.
Lexi gulped. It was glimpse into his own future. That was going to be him.
Well, he thought …
No turning back now.
Syd took one look at Lexi as the runic patterns of blood underneath her fur glowed red with wild magic. She bared her dagger-length fangs in a growl that sent shivers down his spine.
My, what big teeth she has.
With the frenzy of a starving predator, Syd lunged at Lexi and grabbed onto both sides of the metal platform next to him. The chain restraints rattled and the platform creaked with a whine as it bent under her claws. The motors strained against the gargantuan beastess’ weight and tilted the platform backwards slightly. The she-wolf panted and drooled long strands of saliva onto his shaking body. She sniffed him all over, taking ragged deep breaths of his scent, looking for the perfect spot. When she reached his neck, she laughed. Somehow, even in this monstrous form, Syd was able to utter that same barking laugh of hers.
He trusted her. He had to.
In himself, he found the courage to be vulnerable, the same vulnerability he had seen from the other beastesses time and time again. A vulnerability grounded in strength. The bloody intimacy between a predator and their prey.
Lexi tilted his head to one side, offering all of himself to Sydney Beaumont—body, mind, and soul.
If he wanted to be a hunter so badly, he was going to have to know what his prey felt like.
In one swift motion, Syd SANK her fangs into his neck with all the savage fury of a caring lover.
Lexi gasped, then slowly let out a high-pitched whine.
The symbols and patterns on Syd’s body pulsed with all sorts of colors, before dissolving gradually as all of the wild magic poured through Syd’s fangs and into Lexi’s body. He could feel a kaleidoscope of life energy beyond his imagination enter his veins.
If only he wasn’t restrained, if only he could wrap his arms around her, if only he could embrace her …
He wanted more.
Deeper.
Harder.
Syd obliged, reading his body language perfectly. She squeezed her jaws. Lexi moaned.
Wait. Shit.
Too much. Too much! TOO MUCH!
“AH!” Lexi cried out, just as Syd ripped her fangs out of the muscle tissue of his shoulder.
The sight of all of his blood on her muzzle made him feel lightheaded. The fizzing and buzzing in his brain—was that the wild magic, or his consciousness going out?
He was going to die. He knew it … he wasn’t strong enough …
Everything went black.
…
…
…
Then, a light. And a figure.
A woman draped in a short white tunic approached him from the abyss. Like Alpha Lea, she was an anthro animal of some kind. No, animals, plural. She was a chimera of all sorts of carnivorous creatures, with fur and features that changed instantly if he looked away and back again.
Sensing his disorientation at her ever-shifting appearance, she changed into a human form—a plain-looking woman with her hair tied back, almost deceptively ordinary, but with the athletic build of a huntress. She had a cloth wrapped around her waist over the tunic, and carried a bow along with a quiver of arrows slung on her back.
It’s her. It must be. Mother Moon herself.
The Goddess of the Hunt.
She spoke directly into his mind without moving her lips.
[Do not be afraid.]
[I have been observing you for a long time, just as you have been studying my chosen followers.]
[You are not prey, little one.]
[You are a hunter. MY hunter.]
[I deem you worthy of my pack.]
[Welcome, my child. I’m so glad you’re finally here.]
The goddess—his Goddess—smiled, her teeth as sharp and bright as moonbeams.
…
And his vision returned. He was back in the train station.
And Lexi was still here.
Still alive.
Blood dripped down Lexi’s chest and shoulder from the bite wound Syd had inflicted, the pain of which Lexi could feel was already decreasing. Red magical sparks flew from the wound as it healed at an accelerated rate.
Syd stepped away and gradually shifted back into her human form, a maniacal grin plastered across her claw-scarred face, inhaling deeply through her nostrils, savoring his scent—
No.
… Her scent.
Lexi could smell it too.
She … she …
… She was a beastess now.
She didn’t look like one right now, but she could feel it in her soul.
She could feel the wild magic of the Goddess coursing through her bloodstream. A magic unconstrained by borders, chaotic and amorphous, ever-shifting and ever-adapting. It was nothing less than the magic of life itself.
Something kicked into overdrive as the wild magic of Syd’s bite reached her brain.
Drives. Needs. Instincts.
Syd’s magic amplified long-neglected primal needs that had been pushed to the back of her brain over the years.
A voice, a divine voice, an untamed voice—a voice of claws and teeth and blood and hunger—crawled its way on all fours out of her subconscious and pushed itself into the forefront of her mind, demanding to be heard, issuing a command of three simple words:
Survive.
Thrive.
Hunt.
She wanted to fulfill those commands. She needed to.
But to do so, she knew, she still had to undergo her first transformation.
Soon. Two nights from now. Under the full moon of her Goddess.
She could hardly wait.
But even right now, in this moment—in her heart—she knew that she was a beastess.
And it felt …
So.
Fucking.
GOOD.
Lexi smiled—a real, genuine, soulful smile of absolute joy.
The joy of becoming what you were always meant to be.
“Thank you,” Lexi said. Tears flowed down her cheeks.
Syd gave back a warm smile of her own, as Lexi stared up at the beautiful and powerful woman who had swept her off her feet and magically given her what she had always desired.
“Lexi Carpenter,” Syd said, “welcome to the Pack of Abraxas West.”